We settle for a secondhand planet, after the Earth’s destruction. We land amid its fields and shelter in its mountainside temples, dedicated to gods too weak to preserve their devotees or even their own names.
The planet doesn’t fit quite the same. The days are too long, too warm, too bright.
The elders grumble, calling for vast freezers and massive fans to keep them cool. But in the years it takes to construct their power grids, a change has taken place:
The children laugh and play in broad daylight, their irises bright around pinprick pupils, their skin now tan, unburned.
Originally published in Stupefying Stories in April 2022
Wendy Nikel’s fiction has appeared in Martian Magazine, Analog, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Nature, and elsewhere.
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